These don't tend to end as badly as expected, though. Whatever strange mutations, unlimited cosmic powers, or Applied Phlebotinum stops the hero or villain from turning themselves into a deep-fried crispy critter instantly passes onto any clothing, weapons or Plot Coupon that he, she or it may pick up — unless, of course, the lack of protection is a plot point.

Furthermore, a character's super-strength provides its full benefit, regardless of size issues with the items they use with it. Additional strength simply results in an even-harder hit. Never mind that most weapons and so on aren't designed for people who can strike with earth-shattering force.

Even mundane huge objects picked up by Super Heroes generally don't shatter and bend like would realistically happen — the hero may have vast strength, but the area to which they could direct that strength is relatively small. (Witness Superman picking a car up by the bumper — by rights it ought to tear off in his hands, leaving the car right where it was!)

Contrast Magic Pants, where clothing implausibly protects the hero's modesty; My Suit Is Also Super implausibly protects plot points, weapons, or the special effects and art team from spending too much time.

Often handwaved by explaining that the hero's gear is magical or otherwise of sufficient durability and strength for them to gain the equivalent benefit.

Examples

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Handwaved as a Subset of Powers

Anime and Manga

In One Piece, it is explicitly stated that the Logia Devil Fruit powers also make the user's clothing affected by their powers - it transforms along with its wearer. Other powers and even badass normalness also usually affect the clothing: when Luffy inflates to giant size, his clothes grow with him, Chopper's pants pretty much come from the same brand as Hulk's, Sanji's suits do not burn when he sets his legs on fire (with air friction), Zoro's clothes do rip, a bit, but nowhere to a degree you'd expect from something that was in the path of a sword strike that slices buildings like pizza.

When someone in the question corner asked why Ms. Doublefinger's spike powers don't rip her clothes, Oda basically says that if he had that happen it would change the tone of the comic quite a bit.

In general, most Devil Fruit powers change along with the user, or are unaffected by said user's powers. According to Oda, this is because the manga would have too much unnecessary nudity if the Clothing Damage was portrayed realistically. Still, there are some Devil Fruits that don't affect clothing, like Jewelry Bonney and Ain's deaging abilities, or Honey Queen's Logia fruit.

In Durarara!!, Celty's clothes are created using her ability to manipulate shadows. Izaya wonders out loud at one point if shining a really bright light on her would leave her naked. (She gets a couple of spotlights put on her in Episode 12.5 and nothing happens.)

Comic Books

In The DCU, the reason why the various Flashes and other speedsters don't burn their clothing - or themselves for that matter - from air friction is that each has an invisible aura around their bodies to protect them. In fact, that's how the Barry Allen Flash first defeated his evil counterpart, Professor Zoom. The villain bragged how he used a chemical coating to protect himself from air friction and Allen successfully bet that his aura was better protection when he starting pushing Zoom fast enough to have the resulting heat overwhelm his coating. Wally West literally had a super-suit made out of the Speed Force that powers all "speedsters". In the New 52 relaunch, Barry Allen's super-suit is constructed of metal plates because regular clothes would simply burn off when he ran. The metal in his super-suit reacts differently to the Speed Force.

Superboy (Kon-El) had "Tactile Telekinesis" that let him extend a telekinetic field into anything he touched. This is directly related to the phenomena that used to protect Superman's costume (see below.)

Green Lantern's costume/uniform is created by his power ring by simply changing his regular clothes to his uniform. Thus, as long as the ring is working, his work clothes are usually going to look great and clean by default.

Common among the X-Men. Kurt Wagner's, Kitty Pryde's and Jamie Madrox's clothes are teleported, phased and duplicated as well. The same goes for whatever they are holding. The story breaking potential of this is rarely touched upon. The reason for this is briefly explained in Giant-Size X-Men #1 as the X-Men's costumes being made of unstable molecules, provided by Reed Richards (see below). Common in the Marvel Universe as a whole, really. Reed Richards's suit stretches with his body, for instance, because it too is made of unstable molecules.

In the short-lived "Threeboot" version of Legion of Super-Heroes, it's established that Brainiac 5 had a very hard time designing a version of the Legion flight ring that would triplicate with Triplicate Girl when she used her powers.

In John Ostrander's run as writer on Martian Manhunter, it's established that the telepathic, shapeshifting Martians wear clothes that are actually bioengineered organisms that shapeshift in accordance with the wearer's telepathic commands.

Literature

In Animorphs, the characters couldn't figure out how to morph clothing at first, leading to two occasions when Tobias morphed out of his clothes and demorphed naked. Cassie somehow figures out that tight clothing, like spandex or bike shorts, will morph with you, so after the first book the characters have standard "morphing suits" they wear under their normal outfits. A later book mentions something about their powers creating a "morphing field" around them, which may have something to do with it. The ability to morph clothes is also related to one's proficiency with morphing. Cassie, the best morpher among the Animorphs, is the first to figure out how to morph clothing. Later, the team crosses paths with a young female Andalite who can morph normal, non-skintight clothes due to her advanced skill.

In Tales of an Mazing Girl the main character suit is kevlar. It cuts down on replacing it, or modesty disasters. It doesn't always work, but it helps.

Tabletop Games

Aberrant has the "Attunement" Background, which protects everything within the immediate (and we mean immediate) radius of the character from powers such as growth, self-immolation, and shapeshifting. One dot is enough to protect their clothing; five dots is enough to protect another person.

Web Original

In the Whateley Universe, there is more than one kind of power-set to be a brick. One type, as demonstrated by the main character Lancer, is a PK field about and through his body, which provides (for him) five tons of motive force and absorbs up to five tons of impact. But the PK field extends slightly past his skin, to protect his clothes. In fact, by the end of Lancer's first term at Whateley Academy, he has learned how to extend his field over objects he holds, as long as they aren't too long. He has a pair of foot-long paper 'swords' in his pocket, and when he extends his field over them, he has short swords that have a PK 'knife edge' that can cut through a LOT of stuff. He has also done a similar trick with a baseball bat, essentially making the bat as indestructible as he is. How's that for Handwavium?

Handwaved as a Super Suit

Comic Books

Superman has no problem diving into the center of the sun without even leaving scorch marks on his spandex booties, so having bullets bounce off without ripping the material isn't exactly attention-getting. Pre-Crisis, this was explained by his wearing a "super suit" made from Kryptonian materials. Post-Crisis, it was explained that the same force that made his skin nigh-impregnable transferred the quality to skintight costumes (thus allowing for dramatic rips of the cape, as well). Similarly, his glasses are fashioned from pieces of the windshield of the rocket that brought him to Earth, so as to allow his heat vision to be used without melting his glasses. Although whether his Eye Beams generate heat throughout their length or only where they converge varies according to artist and writer. He's been shown to be able to generate points of heat within objects (heat vision heart massage, anyone?) while others show parallel holes where his heat vision burned its way in. The pre-New 52 canonical explanation is that Superman has a bioaura that protects his suit. He's even extended it a few times to save people. In the New 52, Superman wears skintight Kryptonian armor that is as nigh-invulnerable as he is. Prior to finding the armor, he wore Civvie Spandex that would tear apart when he was damaged.

The costumes of the Fantastic Four are explicitly made of "unstable molecules". Even beyond that, though, the Invisible Woman transfers whatever makes her invisible to anything she picks up, the Human Torch can flame on while carrying a paper Plot Coupon, and the Thing doesn't always crush whatever he holds into dust.

After Sue got her Force Fields powers, it became a Retcon that her Invisibility was a result of the Force Fields, and she can make anyone/anything Invisible. So she technically doesn't need a "special" costume anymore.

Eventually, unstable molecules became pretty standard for Marvel superheroes, or at least for the ones who are either on good terms with the Fantastic Four or rich enough to just buy the stuff (there being a substantial overlap in those groups, of course).

Colossus's traditional costume had Magic Pants made of unstable molecules, exposing his thighs when he was in his metal form and allowing them to be decently covered while in human form. "Had" is the operative word. Ever since Colossus' return in Astonishing X-Men, whenever he's in his otherwise-just-like-day-one costume, he shows just as much leg in human form as in metal form. No complaints.

Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man 2099, wears a suit made from the above mentioned unstable molecules. However, being from the future, the material has entered the mainstream market, though he comments on how expensive it is to have a wardrobe solely made of that (civvy clothes too). His Spider-Man costume was actually something he already had in his closet from a recent Day of the Dead festival just in case things got a bit too rowdy.

Doctor Strange's Cloak of Levitation is enchanted and all-but-indestructible, meaning he can use it for cover in a firefight. (The rest of his clothing, however...)

Film

The Incredibles had costume designer Edna Mode make them (and likely all the other Supers) super-suits that could stand up to their powers and do things like turn invisible in reaction to their wearer doing so. One of the fan theories is that Edna is herself a Super, and being able to engineer fabrics with such otherworldly properties is her power, somehow. In a DVD extra, Elastigirl complains about having to constantly repair her suit.

In Blankman the titular character has accidentally invented a way to turn ordinary fabric impact damage absorbent and proceeds to put together a costume in which to fight crime. Unfortunately he neglects to do this for the costume he puts together for his future sidekick and then neglects to mention this to said person when they finally put it on, most likely for that one reason.

Literature

In the Corean Chronicles by L.E. Modesitt Jr, there is a fabric known as nightsilk. High quality nightsilk is not only warm and comfortable, when it is worn in a tightly fitting outfit, it can absorb impact damage. The reason that most people in the story give for the main character of the first trilogy surviving all the stuff he gets put through is because he's wearing bulletproof underwear (In truth, he needs to reinforce it with his psychic powers to survive the more extreme incidents, but casual observers know about his nightsilk body stocking and don't know about his powers). This material is not widely used as military armor due to a limited supply and the high manufacturing costs (The hero of the first trilogy can acquire nightsilk clothing mainly because his family makes it).

GURPS Supers had an advantage called "Costume", which provided the benefit to superhumans of an outfit that was not harmed by powers and changed with shape/size shifters; essentially, it acted as an extension of the character's skin.

In the Global Guardians PBEM Universe, biofiber is an artificial multi-cellular colony organism that tends to grow in a film only two cells thick. The resulting "fabric" is extremely tough for its weight and will accept dyes of a specific formulation only. Biofiber possesses a small measure of cellular mobility, making a tight-fitting garment of biofiber self-fitting to a certain extent, and its natural biological defenses mean that in large part its self-cleaning. However, it is the fabric's interaction with the exotic metabolisms of metahumans that make it truly amazing. After a short period of acclimation, biofiber adapts to energetic or metamorphic powers. Thus, a costume made of bio-fiber can stretch, grow, or shrink with its wearer, and will not be incinerated, frozen, or otherwise harmed by the energetic emissions projected by its wearer.

Webcomics

Spinnerette's costume is made of spidersilk (her own), making it heatproof and bulletproof, and it comes with high-traction gloves and boots.

The provided image is from the Fleischer StudiosSuperman Theatrical Cartoon "The Mechanical Monsters". In context, the scene has Supes just saving Lois from being dipped in molten lead, only for the mad scientist of the short to pour a whole vat of the stuff to try and kill them both—cue Superman saving Lois by using his cape to deflect it.

In one Gargoyles episode, Dingo makes friends with a grey goo entity made of nanobots, and it decides to fuse itself with his power armor. From then on he wears armor-shaped grey goo instead of actual armor, and it retains its intelligence and amazing abilities.

No Handwave

Anime and Manga

In Black Cat sweeper clothes are custom made with best possible technology and can take great amounts of damage. A raincoat can protect its wearer from stone-melting fire. Not to the extent of their weapons, though.

Comic Books

Spider-Man's costume is apparently more prone to rips than most, but still keeps his ability to cling to walls. A sub-example is some artists being picky enough to suggest while his ability to cling works through a skintight costume, this shouldn't work if he's wearing shoes. The black outfit Spidey wore at one point takes this trope's name literally, mostly because it really is more organic. Within the tie-in video game ofThe Amazing Spider-Man if the player is attacked frequently, the suit will begin to show tears, eventually getting shredded and Peter becoming bruised and bloodied.

When the Ultimate Marvel counterpart of Giant-Man grows, he winds up naked, and his 60-foot costume was confiscated when he left the Ultimates, leading to embarrassing publicity when he has to grow in public during an unsanctioned rescue attempt. Oddly enough, when Wasp later has to become a giant, her costume grows with her.

Film

Hancock. The titular character is constantly suffering Clothing Damage, which is realistic; he's invulnerable, and his clothes aren't. However, when Ray supplies him with his costume, the leather is never shown to take any damage. Presumably, based on Hancock's own comments about how tight it is, he has a "force-field" similar to Superman's.

Literature

The Dresden Files: Harry Dresden has to regularly spell his duster to keep it bullet/claw/fire/etc-proof. It comes with all sorts of cool side effects - you can clean slime off it by throwing it in a fire and then peeling the hardened slime off, it can shrug off most conventional attacks, it's waterproof because of the kinetic defenses, but it still breathes. Sufficiently advanced technology, his ass. Most of his accessories have also been known to be spelled - including a bear amulet with stored energy, his original kinetic ring, and his ten newer triple-linked kinetic rings. He's griped that he doesn't have the skill or money for the materials to make the enchantments more permanent, as some of the Senior Council does.

In Changes, Lea amps Harry's defenses up significantly, to his slight chagrin and awe. During the ensuing battle, it takes so much damage that when the enchantments wear off (at noon - she's a fairy godmother from Winter, after all), the whole thing collapses into shreds.

Tabletop Games

Mutants & Masterminds runs mainly on the Rule of Fun, thereby neatly absorbing this trope, although a possible alternative rule is to allow characters to have a typical 'indestructible' costume for one equipment point (since Mutants & Masterminds works on point buy and one character point will buy 5 small pieces of equipment, such as a mobile phone or handcuffs).

Subversions

Anime and Manga

Usually averted in anime, but mainly due to the fact that it makes room for fanservice. Example: in Busou Renkin, the alchemic warrior Ikusabe's spear Gekisen allows him to instantly regenerate any injury, even one that completely disintegrates his body. This regeneration does not, however, extend to his clothes, with the end result that Ikusabe usually ends up fighting completely naked after being blown up a couple of times.

Completely averted in Claymore, where it isn't rare to have a Claymore walking barefoot and or with a broken armor because, unlike the titular warrior their equipment doesn't regenerate or stretch. Played straight and justified with their sword.

Mixed usage in Dragon Ball, sometimes a big beam attack damages clothing, and sometimes it doesn't. Notable instance in Goku's first fight with Vegeta, Goku's shirt is burned off by an energy blast from the former, yet latter in the fight, Vegeta's armor doesn't have any damage from him taking a planet destroying energy blast, but later shows that it can be cut with an ordinary katana.

Comic Books

A common exception is Wolverine. His healing ability lets him recover from things that melt his skin off (such as orbital re-entry in one Joss Whedon issue), but his costume stays gone. One issue saw him take a nuclear blast from Nitro at ground zero; he recovered in short order despite being reduced to a skeleton, but he had to spend the entire next issue fighting in the buff. This one goes back almost to the very beginning of his existence - one of the earliest issues of X-Men he appeared in had him blasted by a fireball that burned off most of his clothes and roasted him. So he beat the crap out of the nearest mook and stole his outfit. Of course Wolverine is still often susceptible to the modesty retaining powers of Magic Pants (technically Magic Remains of Former Pants…) Sometimes, but just as often his pants get destroyed too. He just happens to find new pants almost immediately after a naked brawl.

She-Hulk has often been the butt of this trope's joke. There is a partial handwave in that much of her clothing is made of unstable molecules or is "approved by the Comics Code Authority" (for modesty purposes) however she often loses items of clothing that she is fond of during fights. Her shoes are a full handwave, however. A 6'7" woman with a body weight of close to 700 pounds needs some nigh-indestructible Jimmy Choo's. Hers are made with Adamantium heels.

Superboy (Kon-El) originally had his tactile telekinesis protect his clothes, but in later years as he grew more and more into his Kryptonian powers, he relied less on it and more on natural invulnerability. This, coupled with the fact that his last costume was just a t-shirt and jeans led to rips and tears. In a story arc in Action Comics (written by Chuck Austen, but let's forget that part), this trope was subverted entirely by Kon hilariously losing bits of clothing as he progressed through a fight with a ton of Superman villains, from battle damage (tearing, napalm, an exploding gas tanker...) It ended with him wearing only his underwear. (Apparently, he's a briefs man).

Subverting this trope for the sake of Fanservice is pretty much the whole point of Empowered. The titular heroine's costume seems to be about as durable as wet tissue, and her main weakness is the loss of powers as she accrues Clothing Damage. Played with in that the actual durability of her suit is linked directly to her psyche. The less willpower she has, the weaker her costume and powers become, which makes for an unfortunate catch-22 when her self esteem is already so low.

Fan Works

With Strings Attached has the total subversion of Paul. After being turned to diamond, blown up, and reformed with Super Strength, he completely shreds his clothing as he thrashes around trying to contain himself. Later, after he's shed most of his power but is still extremely strong, he attempts to put on clothing and destroys it in the process. He has to be taught an illusion spell to clothe himself—which turns out to have unexpected utility later, as it lets him turn himself invisible too.

C. Ben keeps breaking things, not yet used to his strength (early in the movie, he shatters a glass while trying to have a drink. Later, he's shown using a metal cup...and ends up smashing his date's drink when he tries to toast.)

Literature

Averted in Beowulf, where the hero's prodigious strength pretty much means that no conventional sword really gives him much of a benefit. When battling the dragon at the end of his saga, Beowulf's great strength actually shatters his sword.

Averted in Ex-Heroes, where Saint George has to get his jacket fixed after getting shot.

This happened in the Star Wars book I, Jedi, when the titular Jedi is caught in a massive firestorm of explosives. He just absorbs all the energy (sending most of it straight up in a Pillar of Light) and his lightsaber is made of sterner stuff than most objects, but nothing is left of his clothes except a distinctive smell.

Live Action TV

Zig-Zagging Trope on Smallville. Clark got thrown into a furnace once and emerged completely in the buff, but then later his clothes are shown surviving exploding buildings.

Video Games

World of Warcraft has no problem letting you dive into lava with a bag full of paper notes, fur armor and a wooden staff. As long as you get out before the lava kills you, there's no economic hardship, and even if it does take you out, the worst you have to pay for is repairs for the armor. You pay the same cost for repairs (10% of all your equipped items durability) regardless of how you died (lava, falling, being mauled by wildlife).

Subverted in Batman: Arkham Asylum where during the course of the game, Bats' suit gets tears and rips as the player passes certain scripted areas; a few examples are when Harley Quinn drops an elevator on him, and when Batman is thrown back by an exploding safe (these are cinematics but it also occurs during portions of the gameplay).

Subverted in Nox. If you don't take care of your weapons and armor, they will break. If take your armor off and leave it on the lava, it won't sink, it'll just quickly lose vitality, then break. There are only really three types of items that never break: potions (despite being made of glass), the clothes that came from PC's home world with him and the Cosmic Keystone.

Pretty much every Final Fantasy character. The Ribbon you're wearing to protect from status ailments isn't so much as scratched by a ten-foot iron meteor dropping on you.

An especially egregious example is the duel of Cloud and Sephiroth in Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. The duelists slice sections of skyscraper in two, or tear them to pieces, but their swords themselves survive the impact. Granted, Cloud's sword has to be over 30-50 pounds of solid, fine steel, but his opponent is using a long, thin katana! Then again, Katanas Are Just Better...

At least 400 pounds if you calculate with the density of iron. Most steel alloys are similar.

Pretty much every First-Person Shooter, where despite being shot at and surviving missiles, mines, and all forms of deadly explosions, then healing, they never seen to damage their clothes.

Especially egregious in BioShock 2, in which for the entire game you wear a watertight diving suit. No matter what happens, it never stops being watertight. Of course, big daddies are made by melding the subject's insides to the armor itself, if they weren't made to endure what rapture dishes out, they'd probably spill out like soup if they ever got gashed enough.

Averted in Doom (and just about any FPS which includes armour as an item) which has armour shards (basically a piece of bullet resistant material which can be slid into "pockets" on a protective jacket and replaced when damaged) and full suits of body armour as a pickups. Implying that at least the Player Character is suffering Clothing Damage to some equipment.

Nethack is a prime counter-example. Unless your precious magic scrolls are in a waterproof bag, they will be destroyed when you get wet.

While your potions turn to water. Note that both of these facts can prove to be useful.

Also, if not properly protected, cold will freeze your potions, shattering the bottles, fire will burn your scrolls, boil your potions and damage cloth/wood equipment, and lightning can explode your magic rings/wands (causing extra damage), and so on. Best to invest in a cloak with good Magic Cancellation promptly.

Angband (and its variants) also has item damage, though with a slightly simpler model. Actually, most roguelikes probably avert this trope.

In the Tales of Maj'Eyal variant, using various area effect spells to get rid of anything lesser than an ego/artifact level item is a very efficient method to deal with the increasingly high number of item you'd consider worthless as you level up.

The game Area 51 is an FPS, and therefore you can't look at your character during gameplay. By the end of the game, it's shown that the originally pristine environmental suit is now mostly shredded and destroyed, with large sections missing.

Western Animation

Subverted in Samurai Jack; the titular character's clothing is extremely prone to damage, as it's the closest thing the animation get have to him getting shoot or slashed.

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